Does someone believe that beginning a YouTube ad like this is really going to get me to listen? It makes me even likelier to skip them. (Oh, and telling me not to skip is guaranteeing that I will skip.)
Honestly, I don't see why ads can't evolve to get their essential message into five seconds.
And I wonder why they don't just have someone tell a joke. I'd probably stay for the punchline.
I'm sure they know their business, though.
like pretty much all industries, advertisement has become a bureaucracy and sells only its own continuation. i don't have the data ofc. but that's what it seems to me. like making movies that people consistently hate, or promoting 'AI' into everything despite no one wanting it, or etc etc.
ReplyDeletereal advertisement now (that is, sales) does not look like the advertising of old. and the advertising of old is just make work.
.Laeth
Hmmm. I hadn't thought about that. Certainly a lot of industries today don't seem to be as economically motivated as one might expect-- much more devoted to social messaging than profit, apparently. Strange to have such a complaint, I know!
Deletei don't think it's a strange complaint. perhaps ironically, the profit motive is, at base, much more democratic than state supported endeavors. every organism seeks its own perpetuation, that's a given. profit however is externally motivated, meaning the company does not exist only for its own purposes, but to serve someone else (ofc, only when it's real profit, not financial manipulation, or subsidies, etc; that is, profit being a result of efficient allocation of resources based on the analogical desires expressed by real consumers through their purchases).
ReplyDeletethe problem for me is how to define true advertising. I tend to believe that most advertising is false, because it is not sales, but religious in nature. this is so default that it goes unnoticed. but what advertising sells is happiness, or salvation. the problem is not getting dirty clothes clean, for example, but correcting social ineptness in order to 'succeed in life'. with those other products the poor sap remains unlovable, but once he uses this special product we sell, his clothes will be spotless, and so will he, ready to conquer the world.
how to regulate it. I have no idea. it's arbitrary after a certain point. and the strangest part is that the more traditional advertisement ceases to have effect, the more its manipulative religious strategy seeps into everything. journalism has adopted it long ago ofc. and so have companies. and so has politics. everything is a deep moral question in politics now, and for example. it's no longer about balancing competing valid social interests for the purpose of social stability and progress, but a metaphysical crusade with right and wrong, and no leeway.
I realized now I am rambling, so i'll stop.
.Laeth
Very good points.
DeleteFunnily enough, I was thinking this morning about an interview I read with an Irish businessman, in a book which was from 1980s or 1990s-- I read it a long time. The businessman told a sort of parable about two executives for different shoe companies travelling to some place in Africa (I assume) to gauge potential demand there. One reported back to his company: "Nobody here wears shoes. There is no market." The other wrote: "Nobody here wears shoes. There is unlimited potential." The second guy was the hero of the story. How depressing!
for our time i guess the parable needs a third man, which would be the real hero because no longer interested in business: 'nobody here wears shoes. this is a moral tragedy! we must give them some, whether they want them or not'.
Deletewhat makes this man the hero, instead of the second businessman, is that he doesn't have to trouble himself with what the public wants. he won't even try to persuade anyone that shoes are worth having and spending money on. he'll just impose it from above.
.Laeth
One of the reasons people were initially drawn to the Internet is to avoid ads. Ironically, online ads are now more pervasive and obnoxious than TV advertisements were before the Internet.
ReplyDeleteThat is bad enough, but what makes it even more obnoxious is that people will then say that this is somehow more advanced and better than ever. Or that we need to get through this to get to a technological utopia because of inevitable social and technological dynamics or some other such nonsense.
I couldn't agree more. Actually, writing this post, I thought: "Why am I even using YouTube?". And resolved to give it up in favour of podcasts with no ads, or limited ads.
DeleteI don't think even think advertising is an inherently bad thing. It's the proliferation of it that's the problem.